This invention relates to a disk drive for driving a flexible disk or a floppy disk to carry out a data-recording operation and/or a data-reproducing operations to and/or from the flexible disk and, in particular, to a method of mounting a drive motor to a frame member in assembling the disk drive.
A disk drive of the type is widely used and mounted in a portable electronic equipment such as a laptop personal computer, a notebook computer, or a notebook word processor. The disk drive comprises a magnetic head for reading/writing data from/to a flexible disk, a carriage assembly supporting the magnetic head, a stepping motor for moving the carriage assembly with respect to the flexible disk, and a drive motor called a spindle motor or a direct drive motor for driving and rotating the flexible disk.
In the manner known in the art, a mounting operation of mounting the drive motor into the disk drive is carried out by the use of a rotation shaft of a rotor (or a disk table integrally coupled with the rotation shaft) as the reference. With the manner, a gap is left between the rotation shaft of the rotor and the bearing portion of the stator. Therefore, the drive motor may possibly be positioned in the state in which the rotation shaft is eccentric or decentered within the bearing portion.
Upon the mounting operation, the drive motor is preliminarily mounted into the motor frame. Thereafter, the motor frame with the drive motor mounted therein is positioned with respect to the main frame. Then, the motor frame is fixed to the main frame. Thus, the mounting operation is troublesome.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method of mounting a drive motor to a frame member in assembling a disk drive, which is capable of accurately and easily positioning and mounting the drive motor.
Other objects of the present invention will become clear as the description proceeds.
According to the present invention, there is provided a method of mounting a drive motor to a frame member included in a disk drive which is for driving a flexible disk. The drive motor comprises a stator fixed to the frame member and having a bearing portion, a rotation shaft rotatably supported by the bearing portion, and a rotor coupled to the rotation shaft for being engaged with the flexible disk. The method comprises the step of forming the frame member to have a main frame portion and a motor frame portion integrally formed to the main frame portion. The main frame portion defines a position of the flexible disk in the disk drive. The method further comprises the steps of preparing a jig adapted to engage with the main frame portion and the bearing portion, engaging the jig with the main frame portion and the bearing portion to position the stator relative to the motor frame portion, fixing the stator to the motor frame portion, and coupling the rotation shaft to the bearing portion.